Where To Source New Sikhs ?

[panthicunity]

Two groups that immediately come to my mind are gays in north america (all abrahmic religions hate them with a passion but gays& lesbians do have spiritual hunger) and lower caste , extremely poor people in India .

Sehajdhaaris are fine as I think thats the first pauri ... eventually they or their kids will evolve in gurmat enough to take up amrit.

[nanosecond]

I am not sure if Sikhs would be very open to gay and lesbian community. Although people may disagree with me( and I am not a gay), I think we should welcome gays and lesbians with open arms. Its a good idea( people may say that we are being opportunistic, but we need to be realistic as well if we need to continue to propagate our religion). Afterall they are like any other human being and its God that has made them that way. Dont we equally love somebody who is disabled by birth or has any other congenital birth defects? Its just how you got programmed by the nature.

[genie]

Two groups that immediately come to my mind are gays in north america (all abrahmic religions hate them with a passion but gays& lesbians do have spiritual hunger) and lower caste , extremely poor people in India .

Sehajdhaaris are fine as I think thats the first pauri ... eventually they or their kids will evolve in gurmat enough to take up amrit.

wrong about gays as they can not become Sikh if they follow the gay lifestyle its anti-sikh but we do not persecute them or discriminate against them. We let them be unlike other faith communities. But approaching them to become Sikhs is a complete non-starter better to let them come to Sikhs once their nasha of wrong sexual practises wears off.

Regarding sehajdhari's wrong again. Sehajdhari's make up 90% of the Sikh community, because they have not had any parchaar they have fallen into drinking, inter-faith relationships at determent of Sikhism, drugs, gambling, uncontrollable debt, lack of interest in sikh faith-history-politics..... why? because they been marginalised rather than being catered for they are left to their own devices for other faiths to prey on particularly christians and muslims who know how to target them for conversions.

The people we as a kaum should be targeting for parchar are:

1) hindus especially hindu punjabis (who have family relations with most punjabi Sikhs and readily convert).

2) Muslims especially muslim females should be given parchar as the muslims often target Sikh/hindu girls for conversions so why not show muslim girls why Sikhism is the truth.

3)And 3rd Christians.... alot of white and some black westerners are converting to Sikhism by themselves but again often feel neglected and left to their own devices with no real sangat around them, they need help and support into normalization into Sikh community.

[SevadaarEKhalsa]

1. Over 5 million tribal Sikhs scattered in central India are losing their Sikhi Sidak and are being targetted by Christian missionaries. They need to be bhought back into the mainstream - worldly and Sikhi education.

2. Thousands of 'low-caste' Hindus have embraced Sikhi in MP, Bihar they need to be helped as they're facing hostility from upper caste Hindus and the administration. They need to be armed with knowledge for more Parchar, some districts can easily become Sikh majority.

3. We need to reach out to the dalits in Haryana (Dalit-Jat issue in Haryana is very tensed since time).

4. We need to establish Gurdwaras in poor nations that reach out to the local population (langar, quenching spiritual thirst).

5. Translating Banis into various languages and make standard leaflets about things such as God in Sikhi, equality, history, greatness of the Gurus that can be translated into every language of the world and then distributed.

6. Encourage conversion into Sahejdhari form. Some people consider someone as converted only when the person has taken Amrit, which is not right. Once people come into Sikhi, with time they will get fully into Sikhi through Anubhav or intermarriages etc.

There is a growing population of Sikhs in South America, 3HO (altough I don't agree with some of their stuff) are doing a good job.

[UKLondonSikh]

Paji my very brief input this morning is that I echo much of what SevadaarEKhalsa Ji has said.

I believe that we shouldn't worry too much about appealing to gay folks or European or Arabic or even Punjabi males from Islamabad (though of course we should never discourage them). But I simply believe the amount of resources it will take to reach to one person from the aforementioned communities, ten people in India or sub-saharan Africa can stride towards Sikhi employing the same financial and time resources.

India and sub-saharan Africa are where the need for educational+healthcare assistance is greatest and where Sikhi and its ethos of Sarbat Da Bhala are needed most. It's important that we don't expect all such new Sikhs to be Amritdhari. The more that are Amritdhari is great obviously but if by insisting upon only new Amritdhari members of the Panth, we thereby limit the general population pool of the Sikh Panth from which new Amritdhari GurSikhs can arise in the future, then we would be doing the Panth a huge disservice and doing exactly what the RSS+our enemies want - they want the smallest population possible for the Sikh Panth.

So that we become a smaller and even less powerful minority, that is prone to constant human rights abuses due to our 1.8% percent population in India not being very statistically important in Indian elections. And before we get too wrapped up in sourcing new Sikhs here in the West, we shouldn't ignore that Dera Ballan with help from RSS+Congress wish to define 3million current Panth members as non-Sikhs by the 2021.

So we need to be vigilant in Punjab at the same time - whilst realising that the main future growth of Panth will come from the poorer parts of India and sub-saharan Africa rather than Punjab. Sikhi in Punjab will only flourish when we manage to eradicate the drugs menace, the flood of alcohol, the selective infanticde of females and concentrate of helping the poor with education and healthcare and eradicating jaath-paath in bakhre bakhre Gurdware, matrimonial apartheid and village level segmentation residentially, as well as the learning from enemies of the Panth from Dera's to Christian missionaries and ISI drug mules who have re-activated practices like prayers to Pirs to generate extra revenue from gullible Sikhs (and re-activating mosques with the proceeds).

In short, every Sikh has to play his or her part for the Panth in the best way they know either directly or at the least via daswand.

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